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The National Science Foundation (NSF), which evacuated Mr Aldrin, said in a statement last night: “The NSF has agreed to provide a humanitarian medical evacuation flight for an ailing visitor from its Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to McMurdo Station on the Antarctic coast and then to New Zealand.

“The patient is Buzz Aldrin, who in 1969, became one of the first men to walk on the Moon, as part of the two man lunar landing crew of Apollo 11.”

Tour operator White Desert said Mr Alrdin “was evacuated on the first available flight out of the South Pole” as a “precaution”.

Aldrin has been a vocal supporter of US space missions to Mars, saying in 2014: “I believe that this nation should commit itself within two decades to leading international permanence on the planet Mars.”